THE UBER DRIVER IS NOT AN ENTREPRENEUR - SciELO
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ISSN 1678-6971 (electronic version) • RAM, São Paulo, 22(2), eRAMG210003, 2021
Human and Social Management, doi:10.1590/1678-6971/eRAMG210003
THE UBER DRIVER IS NOT
AN ENTREPRENEUR
LUCAS CASAGRANDE1
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8327-4810
MARTÍN A. M. ZAMORA1
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9015-2742
CARLOS F. T. OVIEDO1
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4622-8372
To cite this paper: Casagrande, L., Zamora, M. A. M., & Oviedo, C. F. T. (2021). The Uber driver is
not an entrepreneur. Revista de Administração Mackenzie, 22(2), 1–24. doi:10.1590/1678-6971/
eRAMG210003
Submission: Jan. 23, 2020. Acceptance: July 6, 2020.
1
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
This paper may be copied, distributed, displayed, transmitted or adapted for any purpose, even commercially, if provided,
in a clear and explicit way, the name of the journal, the edition, the year and the pages on which the paper was originally
published, but not suggesting that RAM endorses paper reuse. This licensing term should be made explicit in cases
of reuse or distribution to third parties.
Este artigo pode ser copiado, distribuído, exibido, transmitido ou adaptado para qualquer fim, mesmo que comercial, desde
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explicitado para os casos de reutilização ou distribuição para terceiros.Lucas Casagrande, Martín A. M. Zamora, Carlos F. T. Oviedo
ABSTRACT
Purpose: To analyze the conceptual relationship between entrepreneur-
ship and the Uber driver since the company is the pinnacle of a new way
of organizing work. It is argued here that, contrary to what is used in
numerous articles and in the media, the Uber driver is not an “entrepre-
neur” but a precarious worker with flexible facilities.
Originality/value: With the emergence of a new type of employment
contract that is referenced in the labor relations of the company Uber,
it becomes necessary to discuss the impacts of this new organization
of labor. The conceptual discussion about the framework of the Uber
driver is still incipient in the field. The research contributes to a better
understanding of the discourse that the worker understood as an entre-
preneur legitimizes exploitation.
Design/methodology/approach: This is a theoretical-analytical article.
Historical and theoretical literature was used to weave how the concept
of entrepreneurship emerges historically and changes over time. Also,
Uberized labor is compared to Taylorism and Toyotism.
Findings: It demonstrates how the Uber driver cannot be considered an
entrepreneur in any of the historical concepts. It is also demonstrated
that the driver is a precarious employee, with flexible time and auto-
mated management, incorporating elements of the work organization of
both Taylorism and Toyotism.
KEYWORDS
Entrepreneur. Uber. Uberization. Precarization of labor. Work flexibility.
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1. INTRODUCTION
The world of labor has changed significantly in the last years. Its conse-
quences on organizations and society are still in course. Zero-hour contracts
become more usual as the transactional costs decrease dramatically, mainly
due to the use of the internet and smartphones, making it possible for anyone
to communicate with anyone at any time.
This phenomenon, commonly called uberization, is, in fact, more pro-
found than the mere widening usage of zero-hour contracts. It is the result
of a subjective introjection of a new form of labor. In this new form, a myriad
of concepts is used. In this article, we will focus on a concept widely used to
describe this new way of working: entrepreneurship. Countless articles,
both scientific (i.e., Bianquis, 2016; Nascimento, 2016; Padilha, Stein, &
Lemos, 2017; Bakker & Salgado, 2016; Abílio & Machado, 2017)2 And in the
leading Brazilian newspapers have used the term “entrepreneur” to refer to
workers such as the Uber driver. Furthermore, as of 2019, drivers can legally
register themselves as “individual micro-entrepreneurs” (MEIs) to exercise
their professions. However, there is a need to discuss what it is to be an entre-
preneur and its meanings.
In this paper, we discuss the concept of uberization and entrepreneur-
ship. We argue that there is an incommensurability between these concepts.
To do so, we trace the history of the concept of “entrepreneur” and analyze
the phenomenon of uberization. In this way, we can understand the implica-
tions and impossibilities of treating them together.
The global economic context places entrepreneurship as a social panacea.
The growing interest in entrepreneurship is consequent to the consolidation
of neoliberal policies in the last decades. Different efforts of governments,
scholars, and neoliberal activists have been articulated by countless pro-
grams to encourage entrepreneurship in multiple ways and in publications
that feed the legitimacy of the issue. These efforts naturalize entrepreneur-
ship as the only economic possibility of entire populations and displace hope
to its possibilities. Thus, the matter is of uttermost importance, as the signi-
fier acquires contours of political figuration, requiring a precise meaning.
Moreover, the entrepreneurial phenomenon is widely accepted as a dis-
cipline and guiding concept. We will, initially, proceed to analyze what Uber
2
Several other close concepts appear, such as “micro-entrepreneur,” “nano-entrepreneur,” “entrepre-
neur of himself ”, among others. In this article, we will focus on the conceptual axiom, treating deriva-
tions as derived problems.
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is and how work is organized on this platform that has become the pinnacle
for a new labor organization. From there, we will examine how the meanings
of an entrepreneur have been conceptualized according to different contexts.
At this point, the notion of entrepreneurship will be examined as a con-
cept resulting from a historical, socio-economic transformation. It happened
initially through the Mercantile Revolution, then a second Industrial Revo-
lution, and, finally, the rise of the neoliberal model. For this, the notions of
entrepreneurship will be analyzed and which individuals are considered
entrepreneurs as the concept becomes broader in time.
After that, we discuss the incompatibility of uberized labor as an entre-
preneurial one in any of the concepts presented. Instead, the Uber driver is
a precarious worker with flexible time and automated management. This is because,
as we show in the last section prior to the Final Remarks, uberized labor is
managed in a Taylorist logic but with an algorithm replacing the manager.
Furthermore, it incorporates aspects of Toyotism, such as a just-in-time
inventory system and the capture of the subjectivity.
2. UBERIZATION
The so-called uberization is consequent to the organization of labor that
emerged with the Uber service of transport of passengers. Shortly after Uber
was created, several other companies used this model, expanding to other
kinds of services3. To understand this phenomenon, it is required to point
out the innovations this model brings and how it operates. To do so, we
remember that uberization is not a concept related to the labor relation in
the company Uber, but a new way of organization of labor that was made
popular by this company.
To begin its operations, Uber seems to have appropriated an idea in
vogue at the moment: the collaborative economy, which would make them
an app to manage hitchhiking. Later, Uber started to define that such hitch-
hikings were not gifts among strangers but a service provided in exchange
for money – what the Western world calls “taxi” or “cab”. But, of course, if
this were their first announcement, it would be likely that more skepticism
would be raised promptly (Slee, 2017).
3
The uberization of labor is already a global phenomenon, and it has shown itself included in other
activities increasingly. Besides transport apps and delivery apps, other services are adhering to this
model, such as cleaning services, animal caring, logistics, and the number grows.
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The service provided by Uber is made through a digital platform that
connects drivers and consumers. Both of them register in the system and
must be connected through the application. The passenger informs his/her
location, and soon the Uber software finds the nearest driver available, who
will meet him and begin his/her journey. Upon arriving at the destination,
the driver ends the trip that informs him/her of the price of the operation.
When drivers register on the platform and start working, they become,
at the same time, responsible for offering their labor and also for the tools
required to produce the services they offer – the car, mainly, but also the
smartphone, the connection with the internet, fuel, insurance, cleaning, etc.
From that moment on, he/she must adhere to a contract without negotia-
tion. As soon as it starts to work, it is the application that defines which
passengers he/she must attend. The driver cannot find customers by him/
herself; he/she must passively wait for the application instructions. The
moment he/she accepts a ride, he/she doesn’t know who the passenger is,
nor what the destination is, only knowing the information when he/she
picks the passenger. How much the customer pays and how much the driver
receives are defined by the platform’s algorithm.
The drivers are rated by their customers. According to the grade received,
the driver can be suspended or disconnected from the service. There is yet
another reason that can lead to the partial or total disconnection of a driver,
which is the refusal of calls. Each driver has a maximum number of services
he/she can refuse.
Is it possible to understand as subordination the relationship of drivers
with the platform? Uber has denied it (Pelegi, 2019). According to the com-
pany, drivers are not employees but “partners” because they own their vehi-
cles and, thus, do not sell their workforce in exchange for regular payment
in the form of wages. In this way, drivers sell a service paid for by those who
consume it: passengers. The fee that must be paid to Uber is a remuneration
to the platform for its mediation. Besides, it is the drivers who decide when
and for how many hours they will be connected to the platform receiving
passenger calls. Finally, drivers choose in which platform they want to work.
By the logic presented, it is possible to conclude that it is not Uber that hires
drivers, but it is the drivers that hire Uber services.
This argument, presented by Uber, is not a consensus among drivers or
researchers. The company, among other similar platforms, has been the target
of protests from workers who demand better working conditions. It is the
case of the strike on May 8, 2019, in several countries, including the United
States and Brazil. In São Paulo, this made the price of rides go up (Lobel,
Pamplona, Oliveira, & Dall’Agnol, 2019).
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Fontes (2017) points out that companies like Uber do not directly own
the tools and the means of production. Still, they have strict control over the
workforce, the means of production, and the consumer market without a
work contract. For the author, what Uber holds is the ownership of resources
of social production. These initiatives accelerate the transformation of the
employment relationship into isolated work directly subordinated to capital,
devoid of rights. Far from reducing the importance of capitalist property,
uberization enhances it.
According to Franco and Ferraz (2019), uberization produces a new way
of mediating worker subsumption. The worker assumes responsibility for
the primary means of production. For the authors, the fact that there is no
previously fixed working day does not disappear with the roles of buyer and
seller of the workforce. What is changing is that the capital that should be
advanced by the company in the condition of constant capital is now required
from the worker. Based on the concept of salary per part, they understand
that it is a “salary per ride”.
From the moment the worker turns on his app until the moment he
turns it off, his work is controlled by the company that owns the platform
that determines each aspect of the work. Even the length of the working day
is defined by the economic imperative: the need to work long hours, above
eight hours a day (André, Silva, & Nascimento, 2019).
The organization based on uberized labor makes the disposition of the
worker extremely flexible. He will only be called when there is a demand for
his profile related to his location and vehicle type. At the same time, platform
workers are totally deprived of any social protection without contributing to
social security and unemployment – unless they do it on their own – without
having night overtime, overtime, additional salary at the end of the year,
paid vacation, and even insurance. When the worker is disconnected from
the platform, parting occurs without any prior notice. It is as if the worker
never existed!
3. WHAT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR?
It is crucial to understand what the concept “entrepreneur” means to be
able to grasp new phenomena of the labor world. The idea of entrepre
neurship arises with mercantilism, even being used as an ordinary word,
previously to Richard Cantillon (1680-1734). Since then, the concept has
been readapted, reused, and changed, but it keeps something in common:
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the legitimizing purpose of economic relations that become effective. It is
instrumental in each historical moment of a project of society. Thus, the
conceptual rigor that we advocate here is not merely for a scholarly exercise
but a necessary means to analyze reality with more significant emancipa-
tory potential.
Jones and Spicer (2009) argue that “entrepreneur” is an empty shell
that lends itself to occupy a role in the capital relations matrix. This role
pays and makes it possible to live materially. Still, it also requires the only
thing that has remained since the beginning: the idea of an excess of produc-
tion in situations in which a “non-entrepreneur” would not see the same
need. In this sense, the entrepreneur assumes the role of maintaining a cir-
culating economy through profligacy. This was originally at odds with the
subsistent ways of life, tending to legitimize those who attribute material
possibilities to the market.
Even starting from the analysis that the entrepreneur is only a concept
that legitimizes capitalism through excess, the idea of the Uber driver as an
entrepreneur seems to escape it. For this reason, we make a genealogy of the
concept below and establish three historical moments and their concepts.
We are not assuming that the concepts discussed below were unanimous in
their historical moments, nor that there were no other conceptualizations,
but that we are, for analytical purposes, treating the idea of entrepreneur-
ship as a historical evolution pari passu with capitalism.
3.1 The conceptual primordium: Cantillon
Etymologically, “entrepreneur” comes from the medieval French word
“enterprendre,” which meant “to do something”. It derives from the roots “in”
̮
(inward) and “prendere”, which can also be interpreted as “taking for your-
self ”. As an adjective, according to Hoselitz (1951), it attributed the quality
of a highly active person. Thus, we can say that in the course of a millennium,
the word does not seem to have lost its initial spirit, although its meaning
seems to derive, as we shall see.
Richard Cantillon, born in 1680 in Ireland, and a French immigrant,
seems to be the first theorist to focus on the concept of entrepreneur and its
meaning. With a very aggressive commercial background, Cantillon writes
his famous Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, published later, in 1756.
For him, the entrepreneur was like a kind of market activator. Thanks to
this, the market comes out of its inertia. Unlike authors like Adam Smith
(1723-1790), his entrepreneurial view was not based on a self-regulating
market idea but on a market that continually tends to an inertia that is
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broken by the entrepreneur (Murphy, 1986). Of course, his vision was
derived from the opposition to a subsistent life and, therefore, alien to the
market – something familiar to its historical context marked by ideas of
modernity.
For Cantillon, the central feature was the uncertainty of his activity. In a
way, the entrepreneur was a kind of gambler who bet on a commodity that
he believed he valued, either because of time or because of distances. As a
man of his time, Cantillon understood the transhistorical economic nature
as a process of progressive decentralization. Initially, he realized that the
economy was centered on a few figures – feudal lords, the Church, and those
who control land ownership. Over time, entrepreneurs enter the scene in
Europe and take risks through trips that enable information asymmetries
and, with that, risk and profit.
It is clear that Cantillon’s vision of the entrepreneur borders on adven-
turous idealization, which we can visualize in Marco Polo (1254-1324), the
entrepreneur-explorer of markets. In his time, Marco Polo had risked his
own life on trips that lasted months and even years, taking spices and silk
from the extreme east to Europe. For this, he crossed desert regions con-
trolled by the hashashins, met and became fond of the Mongol emperor
Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan), sailed the Mediterranean and
the Arabian, crossed Persia, and went to what is now Myanmar, China,
Singapore, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. In his time, Marco Polo did what was
unimaginable to many (Polo, 1996).
The Venetian merchant’s great feat was not to get rich – although he
also did – but to cross half the planet, dealing with such different cultures
and with such high risks. The entrepreneur was an agent of social and eco-
nomic transformation, an inhabitant of the social imagination. He was the
man who brought to the vernacular world the idyllic histories of unreachable
earthly wonders. Cantillon’s entrepreneur was not the only one who took
the risk of bankruptcy – he was the one who took the risk of dying from
starvation, violence, or accidents from an unknown world.
Cantillon gave new dimensions to the concept of the entrepreneur. Its
function in the market was to stabilize the value of the goods at their “intrin-
sic value.” In doing so, the entrepreneur, as a trader, generates high demands
for poorly produced products, increasing the advantage of providing them
and thus encouraging the market to make them (Murphy, 1986). Moreover,
Cantillon’s entrepreneur acted as a substitute for a central controller, creating
a demand for resources. Thus, it appeared as Adam Smith’s invisible hand
in the classic question of the resource allocation problem. He was contrasting
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an emerging model of capitalism with a feudal model in ruins. Therefore,
the entrepreneur is not only a market function or even an adventurer who
inhabits tales and the imaginary; it is a symbol of the celebration of emerging
capitalism, incipient capitalism.
Cantillon was using the concept, even then, as a discursive wrapper, as
an ideological apparatus. The European historical moment was the modern
formation, the Industrial Revolution, the enclosure of the herds, and the
constitution of a male/female apartheid as the one who works outside and
the one who works at home. It was the constitution of the social logic that we
know today, based on proto-industrial heteronomy, but at that time at war
with vernacular values, with subsistence, and with autonomy (Illich, 1981).
In this historical context, the entrepreneur is a praiseworthy, apologetic,
and celebratory concept of a new world, of the incipient modern capitalism.
3.2 The classic concept: Schumpeter
In a subsequent historical moment, which we can situate as part of the
Second Industrial Revolution, the transition between the 19th and 20th cen-
turies, the concept of entrepreneurship returns as what today is considered
classic, linked to the social imaginary as derived from an innovative process.
The liberal thinking of that historical moment centered a significant part of
its economic vision on Léon Walras (1834-1910).
According to the proposer of the General Equilibrium Theory, the market
could be understood in the big auction metaphor, where prices would tend
to balance as long as its performance was not restrained. In other words, at
the limit, the market would balance and consolidate in a watertight manner,
progressively reducing profits (Walras, 1996). Under this metaphor, the
market, once freed, would be structuring human wills, and, finally, the pro-
cess of the human agency would be no more than finding loopholes in
hidden auctions. Elements, such as technological development, are not
considered in the economic model and are, therefore, understood as exoge-
nous factors.
Then the figure of Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) comes in. The
Schumpeterian thought emerged to complement current economic theories,
such as static models of Walrasian equilibrium. Such models, which always
tended to be in full balance, come to have a deadly enemy: the entrepreneur
(Swedberg, 2000).
For Schumpeter (1981), the entrepreneur triggers the truly significant
changes in the economy. These changes develop slowly through the economic
system, in the form of a business cycle. Schumpeter (1981) also suggested
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that this idea of change produced internally, as opposed to change induced
from abroad, was applicable not only to economic phenomena but also to all
social aspects. Thus, economic development is not limited to the growth of
the output of an economy. It presents itself as a spontaneous and discon-
tinuous change that alters and displaces the previous state of equilibrium
(Costa, Barros, & Carvalho, 2011). Schumpeter (1981), therefore, advocates
a dynamic analysis of the economy.
This new theory of economic dynamics is centered on the entrepre-
neur’s figure as an agent of innovation. To be worthy of this title, it is not
enough to invest capital in any business. The Schumpeterian entrepreneur
is responsible for developing new products for the market through innova-
tions in the most efficient combination of production factors. Thus, the
author arrived at the following typification of innovation: 1. introduction of
a new good; 2. introduction of a new production method; 3. opening a new
market; 4. the conquest of a new source of raw material; 5. creation of a
new organization for any industry (Swedberg, 2000).
Unlike marginalist thinking, these innovations do not seek balance; on
the contrary, they disturb the established balance, and the subject of this
transformation is precisely the entrepreneur. Hence the concept of creative
destruction, which is the introduction of disruptive and innovative tech-
nologies. It provides productive leaps but destroys old ways of producing,
such as the car did to the horse riding, the computer to the typewriter, or
industrial robots to workers.
If Cantillon and his concept were in vogue in a historical moment that
the bourgeoisie was ascending and gradually replacing the feudal aristocracy,
Schumpeter and his entrepreneur enter the scene to legitimize the indus
trialists who promoted the Second Industrial Revolution. The assembly
lines were constituting, on the one hand, a productive leap, but on the other,
a substantial change in the way of life. The entrepreneur was the figure that
made it acceptable, palatable at that historic moment. It was the messenger
of Schumpeter’s novelty.
3.3 The current concept: entrepreneurial neoliberalism
In its current stage, neoliberal capitalism assigns an agent the role of
catalyzing resource allocation and competition. The new concept of entrepre-
neur, postulated by Kirzner (1973, 1997), describes the one who finds gaps
between supply and demand, acting on supply gaps and, thus, normalizing
the market through an uncertain future bet. In this sense, what characterizes
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the entrepreneur is his permanent alertness to identify business opportuni-
ties in the market. It is a matter of individual perception, from which the
entrepreneur takes advantage of opportunities and reestablishes the balance
between demand and supply. The entrepreneur’s supposed virtues are central
to the moral rejuvenation of entrepreneurship and, thus, of capitalism itself.
In this process, values such as taking risks and self-sufficiency are internalized
in each of us in individual accountability (Hanlon, 2014).
Although the central figure here is Kirzner (1973, 1997), several authors
contribute to the neoliberal vision of the entrepreneur, such as Hayek (1945,
1948) and Mises (1996). It is also actively disseminated in the scope of
Economics Science by Casson (1982, 2005) and in Management and
Business Schools by Drucker (1987). In Hayek (1945, 1948), the entrepre-
neur’s figure appears practically, a doer, a being provided with practical
knowledge and who ignores theories and the abstract world. In Mises
(1996), the entrepreneur is central for the economy to flow. His argument
sometimes resembles Schumpeter’s in that there is an assumption of a
stable market that needs the figure of the entrepreneur to renew itself.
However, Mises (1996) argues that the entrepreneur is the figure who
anticipates uncertain events – and not the character who innovates through
creative destruction (Swedberg, 2000).
In addition to these theoretical differences, our analysis here sees mate-
rial consequences. After all, the production of a theory is not just a reflection
on how reality operates, but rather on applied social sciences – it produces a
reality through the performativity of a discourse. In this sense, the model
that Hanlon (2014) calls “finders-keepers”, propagated by the Austrian
economic school and spread by the current notion of entrepreneurship,
produces a world where profit – and in the neoliberal state, therefore, sur-
vival itself – depends on predicting market instabilities.
And although the error is central to this neoliberal entrepreneurial
vision, its predication occurs with a negative connotation. Thus, the entre-
preneur emerges as the model of economic salvation and as a process of
population ecology, which incorporates a social Darwinism, where few get
it right and are successful. At the same time, those who made mistakes are
repeatedly advised to try again -– without any collective accountability. As
Ortega (2014) points out, the concept of the neoliberal entrepreneur has
become a moral imperative.
As Costa et al. (2011) contextualize, neoliberal public policies are
shaped around the world from the Washington Consensus. The entrepre-
neur acquires a central role in the economy, being a key concept no longer
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willing to rare and disruptive members of society, but to all of us. We must
all be doers, projecting ourselves into the future.
The authors demonstrate that contemporary entrepreneurship acquires
moral contours as a phenomenon that needs to reach social totality. For this
to happen, the entrepreneur becomes no longer a way of living but a legiti-
mate form of living. Work must cease to be a means to achieve a good life
and becomes an end in itself.
But even the neoliberal concept of entrepreneur, as a very broad one that
embraces as much as possible, does not seem to designate the Uber driver.
It is not enough to do something in order to be an entrepreneur. Otherwise,
everyone would be one. What identifies the neoliberal entrepreneur is the
willingness to seize opportunities and acts in anticipation of the market
reaction. It is about reacting to the market before the market makes the
auction. And, as the future is uncertain by nature, only the creative agency
can handle this feat.
But the Uber driver is not betting. He goes where it is designated, and
he does what is commanded. The only autonomy he keeps is to choose his
working times. Based on these three concepts, we outline below a concep-
tual scheme:
Figure 3.3.1
ENTREPRENEURSHIP CONCEPTS
Original entrepreneur Classic entrepreneur Neoliberal entrepreneur
Central author Richard Cantillon (1756) Schumpeter (1981) Kirzner (1973, 1997)
Historical European mercantilism, Formation of corporations, Destruction of the welfare
context commercial bourgeoisie factory mechanization, state in Europe;
ascendance in Europe. assembly line, the rise of neoliberalism.
the western industrial
bourgeoisie.
Entrepreneur Adventurous, takes Innovator, creates new Precarious gambler; bets in
characteristics risks (even risking his ways of production or a future market without
life), travels long new forms of selling, enough information. The
distances, creates even by destroying the economic environment
markets. old ways (creative selects it according to his/
destruction). her success rate (ecological
selection).
Who is the Marco Polo Henry Ford The owner of the closest
entrepreneur? food truck.
(examples)
(continue)
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Figure 3.3.1 (conclusion)
ENTREPRENEURSHIP CONCEPTS
Original entrepreneur Classic entrepreneur Neoliberal entrepreneur
Is Uber driver No, because he/she No, because he/she does No, because he/she does
an entrepreneur does not take life risks not create new forms of not gamble in a future
according to this? based on the production or market – it market and it is not
asymmetry of does not innovate. ecologically selected.
information.
Source: Elaborated by the authors.
Even being a legitimizing concept of the new ways of capital accumula-
tion, the entrepreneur’s notion was stretched beyond its limits as the times
goes by. Initially, it appears to be a concept that had emerged from the new
commercial elites that required a new moral in opposition to the idea that
they were unproductive. After that, the concept was changed insofar, and a
new kind of bourgeoisie grew with the second industrial revolution. Cur-
rently, the concept is useful to legitimize the precarious despair of those
who seek an income. The neoliberal entrepreneur is the one who takes the
daily financial risk, i.e., the hot dog seller who needs to imagine what place
with the highest demand today is; it is the salesman who gambles which
products will be desired tomorrow.
At first glance, the Uber driver indeed seems to be this precarious neo-
liberal entrepreneur. But even this broad concept still requires an idea of
human agency. After all, the entrepreneur takes risks, bets on an uncertain
market. But does the driver, guided by the algorithm, still bet? As far as we
can grasp, no. Its work is to follow what the app commands. Even in low
demand moments, the driver can watch, through the app, where high demand
is and go there. It is not of any creative agency but a conditioned behavior.
It is so that Uber’s current big project seems to be robotizing the entire fleet
(O’Kane, 2019).
If the Uber driver is not an entrepreneur, as we argue, we should have
some categories to understand what he is conceptually. To do so, we should
separate what differs the Uber worker from the usual company employee.
The first criterion would be that uberized workers, contrary to the typi-
cal employee, must have their work tools, which can sometimes be confused
as the means of production. The lack of this distinction is what produces the
belief that this is entrepreneurship. However, it is essential to note that
the actual mean of production is the app, the platform. A car is only a tool
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of production here. The requirement of being responsible for the tools of
production is only a typical feature of precarious labor – not a hallmark
of entrepreneurship.
A second criterion is that an Uber driver receives, unlike a typical
employee, according to his/her production, usually based on mileage, time,
and dynamic fares. In similar cases, in which the product is not transporta-
tion, the factors are basically “produced pieces” (being “pieces” as an
abstract generality) and time spent. Here, it should be noted that the con-
tract payment is not new in salaried work, having even been used by Taylor.
A third criterion is that the uberized worker has freedom in time (how
long he will work and what hours). But he does not have freedom inside the
work, answering calls without a choice between places, which people, tariff
to charge, or any other variable. He may deny the job, but this will cause him
to lose points on the platform, decrease his future calls, and result in his
disconnection from the platform. This is an important criterion to distin-
guish uberized work from the mere precarious one since this is, in fact, a
flexibility that uberized workers tend to ensure. However, this is not a par-
ticularly new production regime; it is actually the implementation of the
availability of the toyotist just-in-time labor on a scale never imagined.
Finally, a fourth and final criterion is that the uberized person does not
have a social protection system. There is no payment of social security
benefits, no paid rest time, and the company does not cover sick days,
medical disability, or any other protection type. It operates under the logic
that the uberized person is not a worker but an equal partner of Uber, which
is evidently false.
Based on these criteria and the entrepreneur concept’s review, it becomes
clear that the Uber driver is not an entrepreneur, not even for the broader
concept of the three presented – not even for the most legitimizing concept
of this current phase of capitalism. Instead, he/she is a precarious worker with
time flexibility and automated management. This brings us to the question: if he
is a worker, what regime of production is he subordinate to?
4. ALGORITHM TAYLORISM, TOTAL TOYOTISM
Uberization is Taylorism mediated by an algorithm that replaces, par-
tially or entirely, managers. With cell phones and computers, Scientific
Administration can go more in-depth on a scale never imagined by its pre-
cursor. Besides, uberization takes on total Toyotism with a mass of available
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doi:10.1590/1678-6971/eRAMG210003The Uber driver is not an entrepreneur
workers just-in-time with their co-opted subjectivities. Here, we start from
the idea that uberization is a generalizable phenomenon as a framework for
labor organization (Ellmer, 2015).
Taylor (1990), when illustrating his innovative proposition of Scientific
Administration, brings up the stevedore Schmidt, described as the ideal of
homo economicus, accustomed to loading trucks with an iron according
to his convictions of what movements to do and how to proceed. Taylor,
however, realized – and this is the heart of his management proposition –
that micromanaging his workers would produce evident fruit since more
efficient movements would replace expensive ones. Iron loading would no
longer be a game for big, rough children, but instead, it becomes an opera-
tion made by machines made of meat.
Of course, this brought productive gains while increasing the cost of
management. Now, the manager’s job was no more than giving generic
orders but managing even the workers’ movements, which required more
supervisors. This new cost also justified the decrease in the value per piece
produced by Schmidt, who, despite this, still earned more at the end of
the day for having loaded substantially more. The difference per piece
arranged would go to this new management of movements.4
Now let’s look at the productive change between taxi and Uber. The first
goes back to a pre-Taylorist form of work: there is a relative autonomy of
the taxi driver, there is an absence of micromanagement. Over time, taxi
companies around the world started to create phone services, that is, work
management that increased the taxi’s efficiency, moving cars to demand
points. However, as with Taylor, this, while increasing efficiency, created a
cost, making it a partial solution.
If the taxi required some agency from the driver (because he needed to
imagine where there would be a demand at a given time and the best routes),
the Uber driver is reduced to small movements prescribed by an application.
The perception that what is often called a gig economy or platform economy
(Moraes, Oliveira, & Accorsi, 2019) is an updated Taylorism (Ellmer, 2015).
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform is a precursor to this movement.
Ellmer (2015) states that the Taylorist method is based on reallocating
production knowledge, removing it from workers, and concentrating exper-
tise and, therefore, the direction of work in a kind of automated work
4
According to Taylor, Schmidt carried 12.5 tons of iron a day and started to load 47 with his new
method. However, his daily wage increased in a non-linear manner: before the new method, about 9
cents per ton. After that, about 4 cents per ton. The total salary increased, the payment per piece
decreased – the difference would go to management cost (and, presumably, to increase profit).
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bureau. Taylor broke work down into small tasks managed in real-time,
separating work between those who made the physical and those who made
the mental one. Consequently, the workers lose power and autonomy in
favor of higher efficiency managed by superiors. In turn, these started to
standardize the steps and make complex activities into countless simple
activities (Ellmer, 2015).
This Taylorist process is precisely what occurs in the uberization of labor,
but with two aggravating factors. The first is the division of labor between
mental and physical work, but instead of managers and blue-collars, we
have algorithms and drivers. Secondly, the platform records the work to the
point that, as widely reported, Uber plans to make cars that drive them-
selves, using the behavior of the drivers who used to work for the company.
But while that doesn’t happen – if it ever does – the problem is that the
worker becomes a robot that responds to expected stimuli (Spencer, 2018).
Therefore, it is also necessary to clarify that the uberized person is also
not a self-managed worker, as Abílio (2019) argues.5 The author’s article,
portraying the Uber driver as “self-managed,” brings improvements over the
driver’s concept as an “entrepreneur” since the manager is also an employee.
In this sense, the author leaps, recognizing that the worker is, in fact, a pre-
carious employee. The problem is that Abílio (2019) takes the phenomenon
at face value when interpreting the drivers’ discourse that they manage
themselves because they have flexible hours. In reality, it should be clear that
the driver does not manage anything beyond what a taxi driver does. Even
worst, it loses any autonomy over which passengers to take, where, how
much to charge, whom to accept, and even which routes to take. Manage-
ment is, of course, made by the company’s algorithm. The application auto-
mates the management function.
The uberization can achieve the Toyotist dream of the just-in-time worker:
the working day is indefinite, and the labor universe is always available due
to the economic imperative. Simultaneously, the remuneration of the worker
only occurs when he is doing some work for the company, in the same way
as in the salary per piece, as pointed out by Franco and Ferraz (2019). It
allows capital to count with a large contingent of available workers without
paying absolutely anything for its availability. The workforce is only paid
when work is done.
5
Abílio’s article is also problematic in another sense. By using the self-management concept, it pro-
motes a theoretical-political movement to capture the idea of self-management in favor of precarious
work. Here, it is worth noting, self-management is a concept historically linked to movements of
emancipation and liberation, as Vieta (2014) describes in his libel by an organizational prefiguration.
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There is also a deepening of shadow work, which, according to Illich
(1981), is the work needed for accumulation but is unpaid. If in Taylorism,
control was a task restricted to management, and in the first phase of
Toyotism, it was shared with workers (Gounet, 1999), control is now
exercised in an unpaid manner by the consumer himself. Purchaser
assessment feeds into the platform’s algorithm that is programmed to
punish or reward the work analyzed.
In the case of Uber drivers, even pushing drivers to the places of highest
demand is done through dynamic tariff incentives. Thus, uberization uses a
system of positive and negative stimuli to carry out work management, as
if the worker were a laboratory rat or Pavlov’s dog. The human creative
agency, which is so necessary to the concept of entrepreneurship, is sup-
pressed in favor of what Guerreiro Ramos (1981) calls behavioral syndrome.
It is the suppression of creative action substituted by behavior based on
rewards and sanctions.
Finally, uberization demands that the worker should have both the skills
and the tools for their work. Thus, the smartphone and the car are integrated
into a service production circuit along with individual skills, becoming the
worker’s responsibility. It is the uberized worker who finds himself obliged
to assume the operational expenses of the services he provides and to
assume the risks. As Fleming (2017) argues, this generates a mass of workers
in constant debt, anxiety, and being held radically accountable. Accidents,
theft, or even the death of the worker on duty are his sole responsibility.
The cooptation of subjectivity (Bianchini, 2017), an unequivocal charac-
teristic of Toyotism, is also in place. According to André et al. (2019), in the
interviews they conducted, they observed that some Uber drivers repro-
duced in their responses the company’s slogans, despite having reported
precarious working conditions such as low earnings and excessive driving
hours. The authors also state that drivers believe they own their own busi-
ness, demonstrating that the company was successful in the subjects’ psychic
involvement. This report confirms a condition of adjustment to the imaginary
instituted by the organization, configuring cooptation through identifica-
tion and kidnapping through total involvement (Bianchini, 2017; Faria &
Meneghetti, 2007).
There is an update of the Toyotism, as the cooptation of subjectivity
stops occurring in a planned way by the organization (through human
resource programs) and starts to happen in an automated way. The full sub-
jective worker’s donation is required to reach the maximum score of the
application.
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doi:10.1590/1678-6971/eRAMG210003Lucas Casagrande, Martín A. M. Zamora, Carlos F. T. Oviedo
5. FINAL REMARKS
Uberization is a new phenomenon, and, therefore, the reflection on
what it means and its impacts are still incipient. Because of this, academic
thought on this new way of organizing work seems to be even taking place.
Our contribution here was to bring conceptual precision to the phenomenon
so we can reflect on the social impacts in future articles.
We argue that the Uber driver is a worker – with specificities typical of
new technological arrangements – and not, under any explored concept, an
“entrepreneur,” as many authors say. To conclude this, we contrast uberized
work with the theoretical conceptions historically constituted of what it
is to be an entrepreneur. We followed the path initiated by Cantillon (1756)
up to the neoliberal concept (Kirzner, 1997), passing through Schumpeter’s
classic notion of the innovative entrepreneur (1981). There was a double
purpose: on the one hand, we demonstrate that, from a conceptual point of
view, treating the Uber driver as an entrepreneur does not give the term
precision. But beyond that, the concern is that the word entrepreneur serves
as a conceptual buffer for precariousness, providing legitimacy to any rela-
tionship of exploitation.
In this way, we demonstrated that the classic concept of an entrepreneur
is linked to an idea of an almost heroic risk of crossing territorial spaces,
bringing unique products. For this, the original entrepreneur is an adven-
turer who buys products in the hope that, after long journeys, he would be
able to sell them at prices that, although not known, are expected to pro-
duce a profit.
Then, we presented the classic Schumpeterian concept. The entrepre-
neur was then a disruptive innovator who creates new ways of producing or
new products by destroying the old ways. In this sense, it is possible to say
that the Uber company is entrepreneurial, but never that the driver is.
Finally, in the neoliberal and prevailing concept, the entrepreneur is
understood as someone who, through trial and error, anticipates market
movements. The logic in this thought is that there is a kind of population
ecology that will select entrepreneurs who know how to anticipate the mar-
ket’s change correctly and discard those who don’t. Under this concept, it is
possible to say that the autonomous taxi driver is an entrepreneur since he
needs to anticipate the places of movement and seek uncertain markets. In
this neoliberal concept of entrepreneur, there is a touch of creativity and
inventiveness, although restricted to small betting actions. However, the
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Uber driver is expected to follow the app’s demands rather than being
inventive. The app rewards those who follow their commands through the
dynamic fare and scoring system.
Thus, we can say that the Uber driver is not an “entrepreneur” in any
historical or theoretical understanding. In this sense, we also warn that
other conceptual propositions such as “subordinate self-managed” (Abílio,
2019) are also not very reliable to the phenomenon. Although this idea
recognizes subordination, it seems that the work is managed by the driver
himself, which is a mistake. One clue that these concepts do not apply to
this new form of work is Uber’s project to create self-driving cars. Instead of
human agency, what is expected is precisely good behavior, as Guerreiro
Ramos (1981) diagnosed as typical of modernity.
We affirm that the uberized person is not an entrepreneur but a pre-
carious worker with flexible facilities. Beyond the ownership of the tools
required to work and the absence of employer assistance, there are two
variables to be explored. The first is the micromanagement made by an algo-
rithm. The second, the availability of workers just-in-time.
The first goes back to Taylorism managed by, instead of a manager, an
algorithm that automates, previously, human work. The second is typical of
an in-depth Toyotism coopting workers’ subjectivity (Bianchini, 2017; Faria
& Meneghetti, 2007).
Finally, there is a question explored marginally in this work, which could
be a possibility for future studies: how does the imprecise concept of an
entrepreneur facilitate the legitimization of the precarious work exploitation?
It seems that such imprecision is not only a conceptual error. It is a dispute
of meaning to legitimize exploitation.
MOTORISTA DE UBER NÃO É EMPREENDEDOR
RESUMO
Objetivo: Analisar a relação conceitual entre empreendedorismo e o tra-
balhador de aplicativo. Objetiva-se caracterizar conceitualmente o moto-
rista da Uber, entendido como pináculo de uma nova forma de organizar
o trabalho. Argumenta-se aqui que, ao contrário do que utilizado em
inúmeros artigos e no senso comum, o motorista de Uber não é “empreen
dedor”, mas, sim, um trabalhador precário com facilidades flexíveis.
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Originalidade/valor: Com a emergência de um novo tipo de contrato de
trabalho que se referencia nas relações laborais da empresa Uber, torna-se
necessário discutir os impactos dessa nova organização do trabalho.
A discussão conceitual sobre o enquadramento do motorista de Uber
ainda é incipiente na área da Administração. Esta pesquisa contribui
para um melhor entendimento de que o discurso do trabalhador subsu-
mido ao empreendedor é legitimador de processos de exploração.
Design/metodologia/abordagem: Trata-se de um artigo teórico-analítico.
Recorreu-se à literatura histórica e teórica para tecer como o conceito de
empreendedorismo emerge historicamente e vai se alterando. Compa-
rou-se o trabalho uberizado às formas clássicas de organização do traba-
lho, em específico, o taylorismo e o toyotismo.
Resultados: Demonstra-se como o motorista de Uber não pode ser con-
siderado um empreendedor em nenhuma das conceituações históricas.
Demonstra-se, também, que o motorista é um funcionário precário, com
flexibilidade de tempo e gerência automatizada, incorporando elementos
da organização do trabalho tanto do taylorismo quanto do toyotismo.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE
Empreendedor. Uber. Uberização. Precarização do trabalho. Flexibilização
do trabalho.
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